A Plea Not To Stampede . . .

Here’s a few numbers that might quell the savage beast in you if you feel panicked about getting a Conroe in the next couple months.

This quarter, Intel will make around four million of them. That’s a little less than a third of AMD’s total current production.

Christmas quarter, Intel will make something close to fifteen million of them. That will be around all of AMD’s total production.

The quarter after that, the number of Conroes built will exceed twenty million.

These aren’t going to exactly be rare collectibles. This is not like socket 939 Opterons, where maybe a hundred thousand were made. Paying a premium for these chips is more like paying a premium to eat one of the first new meals at Mickie D’s.

True, we’ll have to share with all the big OEMs, and they might want so many in the beginning as to lead to spot shortages in the retail market, but any shortages will only be around for a short period of time.

But millions of these things are going to be made, unlike, say, socket 939 Opterons. There’s no reason to panic, or pay a ton for the first of what eventually will be one of a couple hundred million of them.

Much has been said about the power of peer pressure. It might be interesting to use it in this situation, because, you see, the person who’ll pay anything for one of these raises price for everyone, not just himself.

If little Johnny Hot Shot jumps onto a forum and says, “I paid $$$$$ for a Conroe,” instead of seeing, “Wow, you’re lucky,” he got a wall of “You damn fool, you just got played” responses, I bet the panic market would shrink considerably, as would any panic pricing.

Before you lay out a premium, remember that a couple weeks/months from now no one is going to remember or care that you were the first kid on your block with one, maybe not even you.

Well, the retailers and distributors will remember, as in “We made a lot of extra money off these suckers with no patience or self-control, let’s do it again for the next hot product!”

“It’s so easy to whip people up into a frenzy, to use their enthusiasm against them. In fact, we have our slaves so well trained that they think it’s their idea, not the one we stuck in their itty-bitty heads.”

Not very complimentary, is it? But it’s the truth.

I certainly have nothing against Conroes; I’ll certainly end up with one. I’m just against people being stampeded like a bunch of cattle.

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